]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/omen-hp-15-inch-gaming-laptop/feed/0660Review of HP Pavilion 15.6″ Laptophttp://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop/
http://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop/#respondSun, 08 Sep 2019 20:42:37 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=656Specifications of this laptop are featured below. 8 GB of RAM is pretty standard nowadays. Windows 10 also comes standard on most laptops. Windows 7 is no longer being offered by Microsoft, so all machines will be coming with Windows 10 standard out of the box from now on

Have you purchased this laptop? Leave a review to let us know. Visitors ask: is the 1 TB hard drive an SSD hard drive? The answer is: probably not. Leave your answer if you know.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-pavilion-15-6-laptop/feed/0656Review of HP 14 Inch Stream Laptophttp://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-14-inch-stream-laptop/
http://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-14-inch-stream-laptop/#respondSun, 08 Sep 2019 20:27:51 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=653Designed for portability, this lightweight laptop has a micro-edge display with ultra-narrow bezel, giving you lots of screen in a smaller frame. With a dependable AMD A4 processor and a super responsive precision touch pad – you’ve got the power to surf, stream, and do more like never before. Long lasting battery life and fast-charge technology, this laptop lets you work and play all day. Includes Office 365 Personal 1-year.

Having a subscription to Office 365 is nice because you can install Microsoft Office on up to five devices. This means if you have other computers in the home, or a school or work machine, this subscription will provide you the ability to word process or check email inclusive for one year. If you want to buy Office retail it costs about $300-500, so getting this 1 year subscription with your laptop purchase is an excellent buy.

Designed for portability, this lightweight laptop has a micro-edge display with ultra-narrow bezel, giving you lots of screen in a smaller frame

With a dependable AMD A4 processor and a super responsive precision touch pad – you’ve got the power to surf, stream, and do more like never before

Long-lasting battery life and fast-charge technology, this laptop lets you work and play all day

Includes Office 365 Personal 1-year

List Price:

CDN$ 329.99

New From:

CDN$ 299.98 CAD In Stock

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/09/08/review-of-hp-14-inch-stream-laptop/feed/0653Why is a tested cloud backup solution so important?http://ibyte.ca/2019/07/15/why-is-a-tested-cloud-backup-solution-so-important/
http://ibyte.ca/2019/07/15/why-is-a-tested-cloud-backup-solution-so-important/#respondMon, 15 Jul 2019 12:00:15 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=594You’ve probably heard this one before – oh, I’ve got a backup. I backup to external USB drive every day, or every week, or once a month, etc. Many people think that just backing up to a tape drive or a USB drive is still a good way to go.

There are many reasons why this is no longer the case. We’re going to talk about and disseminate many of them here in this article.

Once upon a time, people had tape drives. They backed up their servers to tapes. When they needed to restore from a tape, they had this giant library of tapes (hopefully labelled) that they’d need to sift through. If you were lucky, you’d have labelled tapes, one from each day, or maybe one from each week. You’d pop in the tape you needed to restore and restore your data. However, you’d have to reinstall your operating system first, and the tape would just get your files back that you needed – not your applications, or any licensing information, or any configuration of any of those applications.

Fast forward to today. People do file based backups on USB. They likely never run a test restore, so have no idea if the data they backup is even valid, useable or worthwhile to perform the backup. But they do it anyways, and go about their day, and never really worry or wonder about whether the USB backups they have on that USB drive that floats around between offices or sit’s on so and so’s executive computer desk is really needed or not – until the time that it is.

Few people do test restores of their data

As mentioned, it’s great that you backup to that ancient USB drive, but do you ever try to restore your data? Do you know what’s involved, or even how to restore from that USB drive? If you had to restore data from it, what kind of data can you get back and how long? Do you still need to re-install Windows or Windows server first? Are you able to recover any applications from that data?

What happens if the USB drive falls down, is lost, stolen or consumed by a disaster like a fire?

The truth is that hoarding a bunch of USB drives in the server room (labelled or not) is a vulnerable method. Vulnerable to so many things. USB drives, like all forms of technology and media degrade. This is one of the reasons why you don’t see DVD drives floating around much these days as a form of digital media – they degrade, and we can download so quickly over the Internet now they’ve become obsolete.

Having your data on any form of removable media means that it’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable to being stolen, to someone getting curious and picking it up. It’s vulnerable to being destroyed in a disaster like a fire. It’s vulnerable to one day, just not working anymore. The drive could be dropped, or it’s just too old and computers won’t read the media anymore.

Why is cloud based backup solutions better?

A cloud based backup solution is a better solution for many reasons:

Data is not stored onsite. If there is a disaster, data can be restored from the cloud. Even if the building burns up and everything is lost (hopefully no human lives), all of your company data is secure in the cloud. This could mean accounting data and your customer data which is critical in order to continue running your business.

Some cloud based backup solutions allow you to use cloud based technologies to get up and running faster. Say that your server stops working, or there is a disaster. Cloud based solutions allow you to “spin up” a server in the cloud, which can function as a temporary or even permanent replacement to allow you to continue working.

Cloud based solutions can allow you to access your company files from anywhere in the world, so you can be more mobile, as opposed to all of your files and infrastructure being on-premise and being less flexible, and less mobile.

Solutions are available that also allow you to restore to bare metal, or as a virtual machine. If you have lost the server, or you need to restore an entire computer, operating system or server, you can do a bare metal restore which will restore the entire operating system with the files and applications the same way it was setup before. This can save hours upon hours of time to reinstall everything and re-configure it the way it was before the problem happened.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/07/15/why-is-a-tested-cloud-backup-solution-so-important/feed/0594Microsoft Office Problems on Machttp://ibyte.ca/2019/04/07/microsoft-office-problems-on-mac/
http://ibyte.ca/2019/04/07/microsoft-office-problems-on-mac/#respondSun, 07 Apr 2019 02:44:47 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=499Have you run into a problem with Microsoft Office on your Mac? When browsing around on the Internet for solutions, it’s somewhat comical to see what people say. Everyone always has an opinion, right? Reading around, looking for solutions, you’ll hear people post or say things like “oh, well Microsoft Office is just buggy on Mac.” Or, “oh, they didn’t do a good job coding Office on Mac.”

These aren’t solutions, and you should laugh at them a little bit too. If you are looking for solutions to problems, here’s a few ideas.

One of the first things you can look into on the Mac OS is called Parallels. Mind you, we’re not suggesting to jump right into virtualization right off the bat when you do have a problem on the Mac OS. By all means, troubleshoot the problem first.

Virtualization is something to look at when you need to run Windows applications on a Mac. Another situation that virtualization makes sense, is for those of us who have been using Windows for a long time and are having trouble making the adjustment to the Mac OS. It can be a little bit different using Mac when you’ve been using Windows for so long.

Parallels – Simple Windows Desktop Virtualization on Mac OS

One form of Windows virtualization on Mac is called Parallels. This is an easy way to use Windows inside of Mac OS. It does not require you to have a lot of knowledge on Mac or on Windows in order to get it to work – it’s mainly as simple as installing an application. So, as long as you can install an application, you can run Windows virtualization inside of a Mac OS.

Of course, there’s compatibility issues with all of these things too. Parallels (like any application) will run better on some Mac operating systems than others.

What if I don’t need to run Office – why would I need to run Parallels?

Say you need to run Internet Explorer. Ever notice how you can’d do that on Mac OS? And why might you need to run Internet Explorer, you may ask? Good question. Say you’re a developer, and you’re developing an application, or a website. You need to see how the website or application works, how it feels, how it looks on other browsers then what is provided solely in the Mac OS – which is usually Safari. Not everyone uses Safari – just like how not everyone uses Internet Explorer.

However, there’s no way to get Internet Explorer to work in Mac OS. So if this is a requirement for you, for development purposes or other, Parallels may be a good solution.

You could also look into VMware Horizon, which is another virtualization solution to run another operating system inside of Mac. We’ll talk more about that in a future post.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/04/07/microsoft-office-problems-on-mac/feed/0499Troubleshooting Microsoft Office Issueshttp://ibyte.ca/2019/04/06/troubleshooting-microsoft-office-issues/
http://ibyte.ca/2019/04/06/troubleshooting-microsoft-office-issues/#respondSat, 06 Apr 2019 23:05:12 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=481If you’re having problems with MIcrosoft Office, there are a few different things you can do to troubleshoot the problem. The first thing is to understand what the problem is. We list out a myriad of issues you may be experiencing. Try honing in on the problem you’re having and check out the solution methodology to see what may work for you.

Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Word Outlook or other crash often

If your problem is with a Microsoft office application, or all of them and they crash often, you can try running a repair on the Office suite. To initiate a repair in Windows 10, click on the Start button, then click on Control Panel (or just search for it). Once in Control Panel, click on Programs and Features. This will load up a list of applications installed to your PC.

Once you are looking at the application list on your PC, look for Microsoft Office. Depending what version you have installed, this could be Office 2010, 2013, 2016 or even Office 365. Right click on your version of office and click Change. This will present you with repair options below:

This screen presents the different repair options available for Microsoft Office.

In terms of the two repair options, quick repair does take a much shorter amount of time than “online repair.” This window states that the online repair “takes a little longer,” but often it can take one hour to many hours. This depends on a number of variables, including processor speed, connectivity speed to the Internet, etc. It’s always best to first try a “quick repair,” and if that does not work out, try the online repair as a second option.

Repair options do not resolve licensing problems

If you are having a licensing problem, no amount of repair you do will fix that. Licensing issues are troubleshot in another manner. In order to understand licensing problems, you should first understand the difference between Retail Microsoft Office Keys and Office 365 Subscriptions.

Microsoft Retail Office Keys

Microsoft Office was always provided as a retail purchase. In the early days, you would buy a CD which came with a “cd key.” This was used to install the software and the key would authenticate against a Microsoft server online. Similar to Windows activation, the key would only work once. Once consumed, it couldn’t be used to activate MIcrosoft Office on another computer.

This later migrated to the use of “digital keys.” Essentially, you wouldn’t get a disc with the software anymore. You’d download the software from MIcrosoft, and then again use the key to authenticate the installation against Microsoft servers. The method of a “digital download” started to come about once people started having faster Internet connection speeds – and as you know, it’s now the year 2019 and no one even uses CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs anymore. It’s just not nessecary, since we can download and distribute information from the Internet so quickly.

Office 365 Subscription Model

Eventually, as more and more software applications have moved towards Software as a Service model, Microsoft also decided to get on-board and start offering Office 365 as a subscription. As Microsoft moves more into the subscription level model, retail keys become more difficult to track and more difficult to manage. If you purchase Open Licensing from MIcrosoft, e.g buying licensing for many computers at once, then you’ll be able to access the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center (MVLC). This is an easier way to manage licensing if you don’t go to the Office 365 model.

With all of that being said, there are many companies that don’t know how to properly acquire and facilitate Microsoft retail and Open Licensing. The day is coming where you won’t need an IT company to manage your Microsoft licensing anymore – you can do it yourself very easily, with Office 365. Whether Microsoft means to eliminate the middleman or not is a difficult thing to know for sure.

The conclusion to the argument of retail licensing vs. Office 365 licensing: Microsoft is moving fully and completely towards the subscription model. The only time where it may make sense to purchase Office 365 on a retail level is to license a very small number of computers, such as less than three – and you need them to talk to a third party email service (other than Microsoft), or your own Exchange server.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2019/04/06/troubleshooting-microsoft-office-issues/feed/0481MalwareBytes is a good program for Malware scanninghttp://ibyte.ca/2018/06/06/malwarebytes-is-a-good-program-for-malware-scanning/
http://ibyte.ca/2018/06/06/malwarebytes-is-a-good-program-for-malware-scanning/#respondWed, 06 Jun 2018 03:21:55 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=373As the title reads, MalwareBytes is a good program to use for scanning for malware and adware on your computer. Over time, malware and adware can be picked up while browsing the Internet. If you are browsing questionable websites at times, it’s more likely that the computer will pickup little pieces of spyware here and there. Usually, the spyware and malware one finds while browsing online is not malicious, but it’s also possible that eventually some malicious malware like a trojan can be picked up.

Browser & Toolbar Hijacks

Some of the most common hijacks out there are browser hijacks and toolbars. Browser hijacks were more popular in earlier days of the Internet, you don’t see them as much now because less and less people use IE. For whatever reason, IE was always (and probably still is) susceptible to browser and toolbar hijacks. With more users switching over to browsers like Firefox and Chrome, more computer users are finding that having multiple browsers enables them to have some fallback measures should one browser wind up full of shall we say, junk.

Toolbars that are annoying you can usually be removed by looking for the “add-ons” area of most browsers. Try disabling unneeded add-ons. MalwareBytes may also pickup foreign toolbars as “PUPs,” or “potentially unwanted programs.” Feel free to remove them when they do.

CCleaner

Programs like CCleaner are also useful. CCleaner will help to remove “dead” files that aren’t really in use anymore, but still taking up space on your hard drive. CCleaner effectively runs a disk cleanup. However, Windows Disk Cleanup kind of sucks compared to CCleaner. Windows Disk Cleanup looks at temp files and dump files (basically data that is a log of what happened when windows had a problem). Windows Disk Cleanup overlooks browser cache though, cookies, etc.

Deleting cookies is a good idea too when you think you may be having a problem with a particular website cookie. It’s a good troubleshooting step in this regard. However, for the most part you typically don’t want to remove cookies unless there’s a particular reason for it, such as one listed above.

Long story short, CCleaner just finds more stuff that you can remove and free up more space.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2018/06/06/malwarebytes-is-a-good-program-for-malware-scanning/feed/0373Understanding how to use Google Trendshttp://ibyte.ca/2018/05/15/understanding-how-to-use-google-trends/
http://ibyte.ca/2018/05/15/understanding-how-to-use-google-trends/#respondTue, 15 May 2018 01:51:29 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=352Google Trends is a powerful machine, that tells you what’s popular, and what people search for. The only kind of popularity you care about if optimizing keywords, is what people search for online. The different data you can obtain from Google Trends in this regard can be interesting. At the same time however, this data could also create a jaded view of people and how silly the things are that they search for!

In many cases, you may look at the information presented about current trends and scratch your head at times. There are some trends that are hard to fathom, but there is generally reasons why some search terms may be hotter than others at this time. Or at another time. For instance, John Cena is one of the top 10 searched people on Google at the time of this writing. His career must be doing well right now. Another trend (this one is in the top 5) is Israel. This is what you will find when you look at Google’s hot trends

Another one at #4 at the time of this wring would be people searching for asteroid, Earth. People are concerned right now about an asteroid passing by our orbit. In a few months from now, or maybe even one month, the results will be completely different.

A smart way to use Google Trends is how compare keywords against each other to see which is more popular. This is particularly true in situations where there may be multiple keywords to describe your niche.

For example, your niche might be hockey skates. However, another keyword that people may look for could be hockey ice skates. You wonder which one people search for more, so you search on Google Trends:

This article explains how to use Google trends by painting an example: a comparison between the popularity of two similar searches.

The graph represents the comparison between hockey skates and hockey ice skates, in terms of total number of searches. The red search (less searches) represents hockey ice skates, and blue represents hockey skates. As you can see, more people search for hockey skates. It’s less keywords and the word “ice” is also somewhat redundant. When searching for hockey skates, one automatically assumes the word ice is not needed – it’s already implied. There aren’t any other form of skates one wears to play hockey, except roller skates and that would include the word “roller.”

Using comparison methods such as these, it’s easy to determine what keywords you should optimize for – and which ones you should skip. The above example might not always be the case, as well. Sometimes, redundant keywords may be the ones people search for. Search terms don’t always follow logical sense – they can be more fluid.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2018/05/15/understanding-how-to-use-google-trends/feed/0352SSD hard drive provides huge performance boosthttp://ibyte.ca/2018/03/25/ssd-hard-drive-performs-huge-performance-boost/
http://ibyte.ca/2018/03/25/ssd-hard-drive-performs-huge-performance-boost/#respondSun, 25 Mar 2018 18:51:20 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=342Have you put an SSD hard drive in your computer yet? Whether you’ve got a desktop or laptop, an SSD drive is really worth it. There was a time where SSD was expensive, and not worth the investment. However, now they are very affordable. Should you buy one? Yes, you should.

I’m a bit of a gamer, and I really have enjoyed the increase in speed. When I load up Windows 10, it’s blazing fast. I don’t think upgrading from 8 GB RAM to 16 GB RAM would even provide the kind of performance boost I’m seeing from adding an SSD. I purchased a Kingston A400 2.5″ 120GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive recently on sale. The drive was only $55. For another $10, I ordered a 2.5″ drive loading bay that would screw into my 3.5″ loading bay in my desktop PC. I thought the performance boost would not be that significant, but it’s massive.

One thing you’ll notice right away with SSD, is that since there is no moving parts, there’s no more whirring, twirling etc. sounds coming from your PC. The only thing you’ll hear now is the hum of your processor (assuming your fans are all in good shape and not full of junk. If not, spray some compressed air through the system).

From a gaming perspective, I noticed that my games now run in high or ultra-high graphics modes without me even having to adjust them. Before, I used to run games in medium. Why? Because that was what my computer thought it could handle – without an SSD and just a regular old SATA drive, it didn’t auto-detect that it could run games in high graphics settings modes. Now it can. You may say, well, you need a good video card for that. I recently upgraded my video card to a Geforce 1050 ti 4 GB card. Which most would say, isn’t bad. It’s kind of the starter Geforce when you get into the 10 series. And you always want to go for the 4 GB variant instead of the 2 GB variant.

I’ve listed my old Geforce 7770 card since it’s no longer being utilized in any of the PC’s I own or use – you can purchase it on Amazon.ca if you’re interested.

I strongly recommend you also upgrade to an SSD drive. The Kingston one I mentioned is currently on sale on New Egg for $55, which is a great deal.

But what about the storage capacity – 120 GB isn’t a lot?

You’re right, 120 GB isn’t a lot of space. The concept with SSD drives is, just install your OS to it, and install everything else to your secondary drive. Put a 500 GB or 1 TB standard SATA drive into the desktop as your second drive; this will become your D drive or E drive, etc. Then, put all your music onto that secondary. New games? Install them to the secondary.

If you use Steam like I do, you can also get something called Steam library which will allow you to install Steam games, as well as move existing installed Steam games to a secondary drive (instead of C drive). Otherwise, Steam tends to install everything to the primary system drive by default.

]]>http://ibyte.ca/2018/03/25/ssd-hard-drive-performs-huge-performance-boost/feed/0342Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg deserves whatever happens to him. Jail time?http://ibyte.ca/2018/03/20/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-deserves-whatever-happens-to-him-jail-time/
http://ibyte.ca/2018/03/20/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-deserves-whatever-happens-to-him-jail-time/#respondTue, 20 Mar 2018 19:01:40 +0000http://ibyte.ca/?p=333Lately Facebook has been in the news over some bad PR. The story goes that Facebook helped Trump win the election. While this isn’t illegal or disallowed, the way in which Facebook has done this is in itself, illegal.

The story goes that Facebook, collecting data on millions of people, used that data for ill-gotten gains as it relates to the Trump campaign. While Facebook is blaming Cambridge Analytica as a scapegoat, anyone who follows the news and knows what Facebook is all about, knows that they are truly to blame for this.

So what exactly did Facebook do, that’s so despicable? Mainly, it’s taking fake news stories and targeting them at groups based on race, religion, and other factors. For example, in order for Trump to win the senior vote, Facebook would show seniors ads (fake news stories) meant to either discredit his competitor Hilary Clinton, or to swing votes over to Trump by other means.

Many argue that this same thing happened during the Obama campaign, but not to the extent at which it was facilitated during Trump’s campaign.

Facebook needs to keep taking hits like this to learn it’s lesson. Today, on March 20th, Facebook is said to have lost about 6 billion dollars due to stocks sliding downhill and negative PR. This moves Zuckerberg down from 4th richest person in the world to 5th richest person.

If you think, that’s really just a drop in the bucket for the Zuck, you’re right in that assumption. Facebook was said to be holding an all-employee meeting today, but Zuckerberg isn’t there. Go figure. Probably hiding from the music – bit of a lousy leader, isn’t he?

Let’s hope he winds up in jail, Facebook tanks and we can all stop using this production killer

Much to his chagrin, Zuckerberg has been requested to make an appearance at the U.K’s committee on digital, culture media and sport. Zuckerberg’s executives have told little white lies to that committee for quite some time. The Federal Trade Commission in the U.S has also started an investigation into whether Facebook has violated deals previously made to ensure that user’s consent is given when sharing their personal information.

Long story short, Zuckerberg and his company have way too much information on billions of people and whatever lies they tell about that information not being distributed to third parties is all baloney. Everyone knows for the most part that Facebook is a cesspool of data thieves and data miners. Facebook does not make a positive impact on the human race.